In The Morning News

Associated Press: More Americans Turning To 401(k) Loans“As home prices fall and banks tighten lending standards, more people are doing the same thing: raiding their retirement savings just to get by.” But the withdrawals “are taxed as income and are subject to a 10 percent penalty if the worker is under 59 1/2 years old,” increasing the risk of “coming up short on retirement savings or may have to rely on an overburdened Social Security system.” Financial planners are warning that 401(k) borrowers “may have to work longer and shorten their ‘golden years’ of retirement,” if they “didn’t save enough”Washington Post: Samuelson Criticizes Obama’s “Sanctification Of The Status Quo”“Robert Samuelson writes, “The trouble, at least for me, is the huge and deceptive gap between [Barack Obama’s] captivating oratory and his actual views.” While promising “change,” Senator Obama “pledges not to raise the retirement age and to ‘protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries.’ This isn’t ‘change'; it’s sanctification of the status quo.” Further, his proposal to “exempt all retirees making less than $50,000 annually from income tax,” would shift “more of the tax burden onto younger workers.”Newsweek: McCain Advisor Plans Big Changes To Health Care System“Douglas Holtz-Eakin, senior policy adviser on economics for the McCain campaign, said, “We have a big health-reform plan that includes changes in the Medicare payment system,” which “taken as a package,…will address the growth in health-care spending, which is really the driving issue.” Later, Holtz-Eakin says, “You have to change the practice of medicine so it’s not based on fee-per-service, but instead spending on making people well. That’s step one. Step two, you have to improve the insurance market. The current individual insurance market is terrible.”